‘We need someone from Economic Crime.’
‘And it would make sense to do a serious search online first. See if we can find something that looks dodgy. Not least considering his dealings with Goldman.’
Then Waldemar drops a black folder on the floor. He swears as he picks it up and puts it on its own on the top shelf.
Paper, paper, paper, Johan thinks.
A life as a commercial lawyer, a solicitor.
A paper-producer.
As a surreptitious criminal? You don’t have friends like Goldman without being a bit suspect. Do you?
Jerry Petersson’s name produces 1,278,989 hits on Google. Maybe a thousand of them might be their Jerry Petersson. The name of his company in Stockholm appears in a few places. Petersson Legal Services Ltd.
Johan has checked the latest company results. Petersson seemed to have worked alone, not one single employee, not even a secretary. His accountants were named, but he needn’t necessarily even have had to meet them in person. No financial results for the company since Petersson bought Skogsa, just a declaration that the company was dormant. But at the same time he had started a new business, Rom Productions, to manage Skogsa. Nothing unusual anywhere, from what Johan could see at a quick glance, with his limited grasp of accounting.
There are still a fair number of hits, Johan thinks, trying to ignore the sour blast of coffee and smoke that hits him in the ear every time Waldemar breathes.
They’re sitting at Johan’s desk in the open-plan office, at his computer, keen to get out of the cell.
A lot of the hits seem to be about a seventeen-year-old golfer from Arboga.
Several of them link Petersson to Goldman. Articles in the main business dailies and magazines. It looks as if Petersson represented Goldman while he was on the run, acting as his intermediary in Goldman’s dealings with the authorities and media.
A few other hits concerned with business. But no juicy stories, only boring and apparently perfectly normal business dealings.
Then Jerry Petersson’s name pops up in connection with an IT company that was sold to Microsoft early in 2002. Petersson was said to be one of the main backers, and as a result of the sale he made a profit of almost two hundred and fifty million kronor.
Johan lets out a whistle.
Waldemar sighs, says: ‘Fuck off.’
Working as a lawyer may have made you well-off, Johan thinks, but Christ, this deal made you absurdly rich.
They read about the deal.
Nothing about any disagreements. Everything seems to have been done by the book. Nothing odd at all, only a number of happy new multi-millionaires.
And then Goldman again.
According to one article from earlier this year, when his crime fell under the statute of limitations, he was living in Tenerife at the time. The article was illustrated with several pictures of a rather fat toad-like man with dark hair and sunglasses. The man was shown seated behind the wheel of a large motor yacht in a sun-drenched harbour.
‘This is where we start,’ Johan says.
‘OK,’ Waldemar says. ‘But I still think we should ask out on the street as well.’
Sven Sjoman is walking up and down in his office, he almost misses his bulging stomach at times like this, the solid, thought-inspiring mound beneath his clasped hands. Instead there’s now practically nothing beneath his beige shirt and brown jacket.
Karim Akbar is standing by his desk. He’s just called Stockholm and asked for support from Economic Crime.
Press conference in twenty minutes.
They’ve just received Karin’s preliminary report.
The post-mortem on Jerry Petersson showed that he died of a blow to the back of the neck from a blunt instrument, possibly a rock. The knife wounds to his torso, forty in total, were in all likelihood inflicted after Petersson’s death, or after he lost consciousness from the blow to the head.
There was no water in his lungs, so he was definitely dead by the time his body was dumped in the moat. To judge by the condition of the body, death occurred some time between four and half past six that morning. He hadn’t been in the water for longer than four hours at the most. Murder was the only possible explanation for the cause of death. The perpetrator could be male or female, the knife wounds were deep, but not so deep that a woman couldn’t have inflicted them. The perpetrator was, to judge by the distribution and direction of the wounds, probably right-handed.
The forensic examination of Petersson’s car wasn’t yet complete, but the search of the gravel courtyard in front of the castle hadn’t produced anything. The rain had destroyed any evidence that might have been there.
The search of the castle had yielded thousands of different fingerprints. A lot of them could be decades old, and there were no signs of obvious criminal activity anywhere. The victim’s possessions appeared to be untouched. In other words, no indications that robbery was the motive. The castle chapel and other buildings were also clean.
They were in the process of draining the moat in the search for the murder weapon, because the divers hadn’t been able to find anything in the sludge at the bottom. Sven was worried about the fish at first, until he accepted that they were a necessary sacrifice.
‘How are you going to play this?’
Sven looks over at Karim.
‘Tell it like it is. Without any details.’
‘The connection to Goldman?’
‘They’ve already found that. It’s on the
Then Sven sees Malin’s face before him. She looked worse than ever out at the castle. Red and puffy, almost old. She might well have been drinking all night. Had something happened? With Tove? She blames herself for what happened in Finspang last summer. Or is this about her and Janne? It doesn’t seem to be going very well.
‘Bloody hell,’ Sven says finally. ‘Why do I have a feeling that we’re only at the start of a whole load of misery?’
16
Borje Svard is standing in the rain in his garden in Tornhagen wearing a light blue raincoat. From the car Malin sees him raise his hand and throw a stick between the apple trees down towards the red-painted kennel block. The two beautiful Alsatians’ coats are glistening with damp as they chase the stick, playfully fighting over it with sharp, bared teeth.
Borje is a thickset man, and his waxed moustache is drooping towards the grass.
Zeke stops in front of the gate, parking behind the blue car of a district nurse. In the back seat Jerry Petersson’s beagle has leaped up, not barking, just staring expectantly out at the dogs in the garden.
Borje looks over towards them. Waves them over to him, stays where he is in the middle of the garden.
The little single-storey house is painted white, well maintained. Borje’s wife Anna would never tolerate anything else, even though she’s so weak now that she can’t even breathe without help. The illness has destroyed the nerves around her lungs and she’s living on overtime, at the age of fifty.
They leave Jerry Petersson’s dog in the car, and the Alsatians rush over to them as they open the gate.
Not wary, but welcoming, sniffing and licking, before they set off down the garden again without paying any attention to the beagle in the back seat.
Zeke and Malin go over to Borje. Shake his wet hand.
‘How are you both doing?’ Zeke asks.
